Why They Failed

West
Side Highway Collapsed
1973
According
to inspection reports in the early 1970s, New York's West Side Highway
had become too small to accommodate the 130,000 motorists who traveled it each
day, and it was also falling apart. Yet little had been done when, on December
16, 1973, as a contractor was en route to conduct a routine repair of the
roadway, part of the bridge buckled and fell. The collapse took the
contractor's loaded dump truck down with it.
(Fortunately, no one was hurt.) Modern sensors can measure roadway strain and
alert experts, who can use such sensor readings, for example, to adjust a
bridge or highway's weight restrictions as necessary before any collapse
occurs.